Tabitha
by MusUtoo
Summary: My version of what happened on Mindoir.  One shot


Muted explosions rocked the ground under her feet, gun fire peppered the air around her, and desperate, blood curdling screams chilled her to the bone. She couldn't move... couldn't speak. Her voice was lodged firmly inside, somewhere between a stomach threatening to empty its contents, and a throat that was barely even letting air get through to her lungs. Her mothers hand pulled her along, jerky and frantic. The dark haired girl blinked, her lengthy lashes soaked with frightened tears. Lips that were once plump with youth and innocents were drawn out into an ugly thin line. Mud clung to her hands, knees and feet. She hadn't had time to put on shoes... they had come in the middle of the night. Her brother raced ahead of the two females, his father at his side- an obvious limp in his gait. He has been shot. She had seen the blood, saw him wince... but he has said nothing about it. The family turned a corner towards the garage, her papa had promised an escape waiting there, but inside they found the ugly aliens. Angry eyes and guns... ugly dagger teeth, and uglier personalities. Her momma often referred to them as 'worse than Krogans'.

The aliens raised their weapons, papa raised his to protect them... brother too. Someone shot at them. Brother fell to his knees, papa fell beside him. He wasn't moving. The aliens surrounded them and forced momma and her to their knees. More words were spoken and a gun was placed against the back of her brothers head. She didn't understand what he said... but she did hear her mother scream, and a shot rang out. Something splattered. It reminded her of when papa had brought home a watermelon, and it had cracked open on the floor. Another shot cracked to life, and she felt something splatter against the side of her face. Her mothers body slumped to the ground in her peripheral vision, joining the still figures of her brother and father. She felt the warm barrel of the gun pressed snugly to the back of her skull, and the girl sucked in a quick panicked breath.

"...Wait, we've got a little room left on the ship. We'll take her too."

The gun dropped away, and a cold hand took hold of her arm. It attempted to lift her up, but three quick and precise shots dropped the Batarian. He went down without so much as a grunt, adding to the little pile of bodies at her side. The girl trembled, and the breath she had been holding in trickled out with a shudder. More shots, eight deafening cracks in total, followed directly after. Someone cursed... someone screamed. There was a battle raging on directly behind her...but she couldn't see it. The girls eyes were wide and blank, staring at a spot in the dirt directly in front of her as if looking away from it would cause the world around her to crack and shatter like a pane of glass. Time passed by in a blink, and suddenly she was very aware at the stillness of the ground beneath her knees. The air had long since gone silent... and she could feel a soft breeze on her face. Off in the distance she could hear people talking, a soft murmur of male and female voices. For a moment, just a tiny pleasant moment, she expected to turn and see the people of her colony- her neighbors... her friends- gathered around like it was any other day.

... Instead, when the girl of eleven turned her chin to the bodies at her side she saw the blood... chunks of shattered skull... brain matter. Her momma's eyes wide open, a death mask angled at her papa's corpse. The girls lips twitched, and she lifted a cramped arm from her side. Her fingers were numb... slow, but she got them to where she wanted them to go. Tabitha hooked her fingers around her mothers elbow and tugged. "...Momma." Her voice sounded strange, even to her own ears. The woman was stiff, her skin was ice cold. She was ridged... unresponsive. Tabitha didn't believe it though. "... Momma." She tugged again and lifted her eyes from the woman to her brothers hunched over form. "...Avery..?" Her eyes stung... she hadn't blinked in a long time. Her lips trembled, and large childlike orbs8 shifted into something terrible. The blue her mother had always complemented her on was barren of light. The warmth a happy childhood had rooted inside died, and was replaced by a detached coldness that radiated from within. Her mind hand't caught up with her yet, she couldn't process what had just happened. From eating dinner with her family like normal... mashed yams... pork... milk. A bed time story from her papa, about his adventures on a freighter in space when he had been younger... getting tickled by her brother until she cried and grew frustrated at never winning their play fights, to... this.

Everything she had ever known. Taken from her within a matter of hours. She had seen neighbors die, people she knew by name... children that she had played with earlier that very day. All... dead. She could feel something in her chest, a cold ball of dull pain... but when she raised her hand and touched the fabric of her nightgown there wasn't a wound. Not a scratch. Her ears strained as the voices grew louder until she could no longer ignore them.

"...few survivors, we're rounding them up as we go. The three Batarians we caught are alive and relatively unharmed.."

The ball in her chest jolted with renewed vigor and the girls eyes widened further. She felt herself shaking as mind and body finally started to connect again. _Alive_ ..._ Unharmed_... Her breath hitched in her throat, eyes darting about erratically as the cold, hard knot inside grew bigger and bigger... _Alive, unharmed..._ Something of a whine slipped past her lips, and she felt her teeth clenched together. Something cracked, but she didn't feel it. Her vision grew fuzzy as a fiery warmth flooded the space behind her eyes. She caught sight of the pistol the alien had dropped and her fingers snaked out to grasp the cold metal. _Alive and unharmed. _She watched herself get to her feet, shuddering as violently as she possibly could while remaining standing, and she turned. She felt detached from her own body.

Blue eyes landed on three aliens across the courtyard, each sitting with their backs against the wall, their wrists and ankles secured in cuffs. She approached, one tiny shaking step at a time. None of them noticed her until her bare feet crept into view. The closest raised his head, four eyes focusing first on her small muddy toes, then up a scrawny pair of legs, a pink blood splattered nightgown, and finally to a pair of empty, furious blue eyes set amidst a sea of messy black hair, and chubby girlish cheeks. Cheeks that were decorated with bits and pieces of what had once been her family. He barely noticed her lips moving and she brought her arm up from the shadows at her side.

"... Alive... Unharmed."

It was a pitiful sounding voice... light and scratchy. Empty and dead... but it didn't matter to the four eyed Batarian. She pointed the barrel of her stolen pistol straight at one of his eyes- point blank- wrapped her little finger around the trigger and pulled. The recoil sent the weapon straight back into her face. Little girl arms weren't meant to fire military issue weapons. It clipped her good on the upper lip, slicing neatly through. She ignored the bloody wound and lowered the weapon again as the first alien toppled over and his buddies began to react. This time, she pulled the trigger as many times as she could. The clip was empty long before the first alliance officer got ahold of her and pulled her away.

She heard later, after being taken on board the rescue vessel, that one of the Batarians survived. It seemed she had killed the first instantly, and blew the seconds face to bits, but the third had only been shot twice and both wounds weren't lethal. Sitting hunched over in between two alliance officers with a thick blanket tucked around her shoulders, Tabitha took the news gently. Across from her, one officer frowned deeply. He had been watching the girl since they had gotten her on board. She was covered in blood and hadn't uttered a word to anyone since they had pried the empty pistol from her hands. He noticed the vengeful smile that had curved her lips when she had heard about the two Batarian deaths, and was more than a little disturbed at the disapproving scowl that settled on her face upon hearing that the last had survived. The marine blinked, and jolted in his seat when he found the girls eyes suddenly on him, pinning him to the spot. She had the face of a child, sure, not much unlike his own daughter-...but the eyes... the eyes were all wrong.

She had the eyes of a wolf. All full of intent, and dangerous. Unconsciously, the man shifted in his seat and broke his gaze away. He'd sooner die than admit it out loud... but the kid kind of scared the crap out of him.


End file.
